Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 13, No. 6, 1984

Moral Judgment, Personality, and Attitude to Authority in Early and Late Adolescence Daniel K. Lapsley, ~'2 Michael R. Harwell, 3 L e a n n e M. O l s o n , 4 Daniel Flannery, 5 and Stephen M . Q u i n t a n a t

ReceivedApril 25, 1984; acceptedNovember 1, 1984

The purpose of this study was to examine the personological features of moral judgment and to determine the extent to which principled moral reasoning is politically biased. We also attempted to determine the relation between moral judgment and attitude to authority and the developmental patterning o f attitude to authority from early to late adolescence. Attitude to authority was assessed in terms of specific sources of authority (mother, father, police, government) and by the Attitude to Authority Scale, which assesses attitudes along the liberal-conservative political continuum. The conservative personality syndrome was assessed by the Conservatism Scale, while moral judgment was assessed by the Defining Issues Test. The results indicated that moral reasoning is unrelated to attitudes to specific sources of authority and negatively related to political conservatism and to conservative personality features. Attitudes toward sources of personal authority (mother, father) were more similar than attitudes toward impersonal authority (police, government), though attitudes toward Father were related to attitudes toward Government and Police. Age trends showed that younger adolescents are more politically conservative and more conforming to authority than older adolescents. Results are discussed in terms o f the political and personological features o f Kohlbergian moral judgment and in light o f recent research on the transformation o f adolescent-parent relations in adolescence. IUniversity of Notre Dame. rl'o whom correspondence should be addressed at Individual and Family Development Program, Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. ~University of Pittsburgh. "University of Wisconsin- Madison. SThe Ohio State University. 527 0047.289z/84/1200.0527 $03.50/0 © 1984 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Lapsley, Harwell, Olson, Flannery, and Quintana INTRODUCTION

In a recent article it was argued that Kohlberg's principled level of moral reasoning contains substantial personological components (Johnson et al., 1981). By using categories suggested by Weber (1921/1946), it was argued that the content of Stage 5 responses resembled the "ethics of responsibility," which was described as a politically conservative orientation. Stage 6 responses, on the other hand, were said to represent the politically liberal "ethics of personal conscience." Because these ethical orientations have been correlated with both positive and negative personality factors, it was concluded that personality dimensions, in addition to reasoning ability, are involved in moral judgments. For example, Johnson et al. (1981) cite evidence that individuals who endorse the ethics of responsibility tend to be reasonable, helpful, and dependable but also conventional and resistant to change. Those who endorse the ethics of conscience, on the other hand, are said to be independent and innovative but also impulsive, opportunistic, and irresponsible. Further, persons adopting the ethics of responsibility had been found to distrust and dislike others, while the opposite was true for individuals endorsing the ethics of personal conscience (Hogan and Dickstein, 1972). On this basis, Johnson et al. (1981) proceeded to test two predictions. Their first prediction was that individuals who advocate the ethics of personal conscience should regard authority in a negative way, viewing it as unnecessary and as a threat to personal freedom. Conversely, persons endorsing the ethics of responsibility should be favorably disposed toward authority, regarding it as an essential mechanism for constraining the impulses of others (whom they distrust, as indicated above). More specifically, it was further predicted that the ethics of responsibility would be more favorably related to public, impersonal authority (e.g., police, government) than to private, personal authority (e.g., parents). These predictions were supported in a sample of college subjects, with the Survey of Ethical Attitudes (Hogan, 1970) serving as the index of ethical orientation. While these results have important implications for our conception of moral judgment and for social compliance, there are a number of questions which require further investigation. First, the conclusion that Kohlbergian moral development at the principled leel is substantially personological in nature is based on the untested assumption that Hogan's (1970) Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) is a valid surrogate for Kohlberg's clinical assessment of moral reasoning (Johnston et al., 1981). The SEA was substituted for the Kohlberg interview, which Johnson et al. insist is "a projective measure of personality," because in their view, m e t h o d e clinique assessment is inherently unreliable. Hence, the conclusion regarding the personological dimension of Kohlbergian moral development is based not on correlations between the Kohlberg interview and personality variables but upon the rela-

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tionship between the SEA and such variables. However, with the development of the standardized and objectively scored Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979), a more direct test of the relationship between Kohlbergian moral development and personality is possible. In the present study we are interested in the relationship between moral judgment and the conservatism personality syndrome. According to Wilson (1973a, pp. 3-4), conservatism "is a general factor underlying the entire field of social attitudes . . . . This general f a c t o r . . , is presumed to reflect a dimension of personality similar to that which has similarly been described in the semi-scientific literature in terms of a variety of labels such as 'fascism,' 'authoritarianism,' 'rigidity,' and 'dogmatism.'" The conservative personality is generally described as an orientation toward a set of attitude clusters, including attitude to authority. 6 According to the conservatism theory, "the conservative attitude syndrome serves an ego defensive function, arising as a response to feelings of insecurity and inferiority, and a generalized fear of uncertainty" (Wilson, 1973b, p. 265). Based on the work of Wilson (1973), we are drawing a distinction here between the conservative personality syndrome (see footnote 6) and the mere holding of favorable attitudes toward authority. While the former necessarily implies the latter, the reverse is not true. Hence, an examination of the DIT-conservatism relationship in the present study should provide useful information on the question of whether Kohlbergian moral judgment is substantially personological in nature, inasmuch as conservatism is regarded as a general personality factor underlying social attitudes. Second, the relationship demonstrated by Johnson et al. (1981) between moral judgment and attitude to authority was restricted to college subjects only. However, there is some evidence to suggest that attitude to authority is itself a developmental variable, showing pronounced development from early to late adolescence. The personality dimensions dogmatism and conservatism, for example, are described partly as organized sets of beliefs about authority, which, in turn, provides a framework for patterns of intolerance toward others (Rokeach, 1954; Wilson, 1973). Individuals who strongly endorse test items reflecting dogmatic and conservative traits have more favorable attitudes to authority than individuals who are not disposed to dogmatism or conservatism. Anderson (1962) has found a progressive decline in these personality dimensions from grade 8 to grade 12. Similarly, significant decreases in dogmatism have been documented from lower to higher grade levels in high school (Pannes, 1963) and during enroll-

6The conservative personality syndrome includes religious dogmatism, right-wing political orientation, ethnocentrism,intolerance of minority groups, authoritarianism,punitiveness, antihedonism, conformity, conventionality,and superstition. As Eysenck(1973) points out, the syndromeis more descriptiveof a psychological,not a political,orientation. This is how we regard conservatismin the present study.

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Lapsley, Harwell, Olson, Flannery, and Quintana

ment in college (Lehmann, 1963; Plant and Telford, 1966). More recently Enright and Lapsley (1981; see also Enright et al., 1983, 1984) have argued that judgments of intolerance (Rokeach, 1954), and, by implication, attitude to authority, may be better understood as lower-level reasoning in a social cognitive developmental stage progression, which again suggests that attitude to authority may show developmental variation. Perhaps the most comprehensive study examining the development of attitude toward authority in adolescence was conducted by Rigby and Rump (1981). They compared the attitudes of 13-, 15-, and 17-year-old adolescents toward parental and institutional authority and found that, while the attitudes toward these sources of authority were significantly and positively correlated, age trends differed. The oldest adolescent sample indicated more favorable attitudes toward authority but less favorable attitudes toward their own parents, indicating that adolescents' feelings toward their own parents had a bearing upon their attitudes toward authorities only during early adolescence. The extant literature, then, suggests that attitude to authority may show important development during adolescence. Consequently, any conclusion regarding the relationship between moral judgment and attitude to authority that does not take into account the developmental characteristics of the latter construct may be premature (e.g., Johnson et aL, 1981), since the relationship may be differentially transformed with development. A second purpose of the present study, then, is to explore more fully the developmental relationship between Kohlbergian moral development and various indices of attitude to authority in early and late adolescence. Attitude to authority will be assessed by the semantic differential scales devised by Johnson et al. (1981) and also by the Attitude to Authority (AA) measure developed by Ray (1971). These instruments tap somewhat different aspects of attitude to authority. The semantic differential scales assess attitudes toward sources of private, personal authority (e.g., mother, father), as well as attitudes toward sources of public, impersonal authority (e.g., police, government). The AA scale, on the other hand, is often employed as a measure of political conservatism (Ray, 1971, p. 38). It assesses attitudes toward authoritarian leadership (e.g., leaders, dictators, and institutions notable for the exercise of authority (e.g., the Army), as well as preferences for regulation versus libertarianism. The use of these scales enable us to address two additional questions. Recent research (e.g., Steinberg, 1981; Hunter and Youniss, 1982) has suggested that there are substantial transformations in adolescent-parent relations during adolescence. Indeed, according to Coleman (1980, p. 409), " . . . it is true to say that at some level all adolescents are involved in a process whereby adult standards are questioned, adult authority is challenged, and the emotional dependence on the parents formed in early childhood is gradually weakened." If this is true, we should be able to observe developmental changes in

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adolescent attitude toward authority, particularly attitudes toward sources of private, personal authority (e.g., mother, father). We attend to this relationship in the present study. In addition, we attempt to provide evidence on the question of whether Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning is politically biased. Hogan and Emler (1978) and others (e.g., Simpson, 1974) have argued that Kohlberg's model defines principled moral reasoning in terms of a liberal political philosophy. It attempts "to provide 'scientific' evidence for the moral superiority of a liberal political philosophy over a conservative view" (Johnson et al., 1981, p. 370). Inasmuch as the AA scale is a measure of attitude to authority in the context of the liberal-conservative dimension, we can address the question of political bias in Kohlberg's theory by examining the relationship between the AA scale and the DIT. In sum, the present study is concerned with the following questions. (1) What is the relationship between moral judgment and personality? (2) What is the relationship between moral judgment and attitude toward authority? (3) Does attitude to authority show developmental variation from early to late adolescence? (4) Is Kohlbergian moral development biased toward a liberal political philosophy at the expense of conservative views?

METHOD Instruments

The Defining Issues Test (DIT; Rest, 1979, 1984) is an easily administered, objectively scored assessment device for indexing moral thought. The DIT uses six dilemmas, three of which were taken from Kohlberg's interview and three from Lockwood's (1979) dissertation (Rest, 1984). After reading a dilemma the subject is asked to respond to 12 issue statements by indicating on a five-point scale the importance of each issue in resolving the dilemma. These issues are prototypic statements of the various stages of moral reasoning. After rating the issues for each dilemma, the subject is then asked to choose 4 of the most important issues of the 12 and to rank order them once again in terms of importance. The latter 4 choices are then assigned a weighted score that is determined by the statements' ordinal rank. The most often used index yielded by the assessment, the p score, is found by summing the weighted scores of those statements representing principled stage-level reasoning (Stages 5-6) across the six dilemmas. There are internal checks against random responding, attempts to fake high moral responding, and tendencies to select items that seem complex and sophisticated in the absence of understanding their meaning. The excellent psychometric properties of the DIT have been

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Lapsley, Harwell, Olson, Flannery, and Quintana

demonstrated in numerous studies, which are reviewed by Rest (1979, 1982, 1984). Attitude to authority was assessed by a semantic differential technique (Johnson et al., 1981) and by the AA scale (Ray, 1971). The semantic differential procedure provides four concepts for evaluation by subjects. The concepts police and government were chosen to represent public, impersonal authority, while mother and father were chosen to represent private, personal authority. Each concept was listed at the top of a separate page above 10 bipolar adjective scales. The 10 adjective pairs included good-bad, optimistic-pessimistic, hostile-friendly, altruistic-egoistic, honestdishonest, kind-cruel, unfair-fair, important-unimportant, worthless-valuable, and successful-unsuccessful. The location of the adjectives on the poles and the arrangement of the 10 items on the page were completely randomized. In accordance with the methodology of Johnson et aL (1981), subjects indicated the intensity of their ratings by using a five-step scale between the adjectives. The ratings were scored 1 through 5, with 5 representing the most negative and 1 the most positive attitude toward authority. The sum of the 10 differential ratings represented the subjects' attitude to each source of authority. High scores on the semantic differential indicate unfavorable evaluations of authorities and institutions. The Attitude to Authority Scale (AA; Ray, 1971) is a completely balanced and reliable scale that has been used successfully across various populations. The scale consists of 28 statements which are evaluated in a Likert-format along a five-step continuum ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." On this scale high scores represent a proauthority orientation. Ray (1971) conceptualized attitude to authority as falling into three broad content areas. Positively stated, these are as follows: (1) view of the leader as a guide and director rather than an executive of democratic decisions, (2) approval of instituitons and practices notable for the exercise of authority, and (3) preference for regulation versus libertarianism. The construct validity of the AA scale has been demonstrated by significant correlations with conservatism (Ray, 1972; Wilson and Patterson, 1968), moral and political conservatism, militarism (Ray, 1972), and task orientation (Ray, 1973). The conservatism construct was assessed by the Conservatism Scale (CS; Wilson and Patterson, 1968). The CS was developed as an alternative to more traditional scales of a general authoritarian dimension. Instead of requiring subjects to evaluate lengthy and detailed propositions, which is the common form of most attitude measures, Wilson and Patterson (1968) constructed a scale comprised of brief labels or catch phrases representing familiar social issues. This format was said to avoid the influence of cognitive processes, grammatical confusion, task conflict, and social

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desirability. The ability of the CS to predict behavior has been demonstrated in widely diverse areas, such as race prejudice (Bagley, 1970), selfconcept (Boshier, 1969), and self-identification (Patterson and Wilson, 1969). Factor analyses have found the scale to reflect a general underlying factor (Wilson, 1970) that has been described as being a personality dimension (Thomas, 1975). Lapsley and Enright (1979) have found the CS to be construct valid and suitable for American samples.

Subjects and Procedures A total of 96 subjects participated. There were 20 high-school freshmen (7 male, 13 female), 13 high-school juniors (23 males and 30 females), and 23 college undergraduates (8 males and 15 females). The administration of the measures took place in group settings. The order in which the measures were completed was randomized for each subject to control order effects. All the measures were administered and scored according to standard instructions.

RESULTS The analyses of interest in the study included assessments of scale reliability, planned contrasts to determine group differences, polynomial trend analyses to assess developmental characteristics, and patterns of intercorrelations to assess relationships among the measures. Because the unequal N and gender ratios contribute to the nonnormality of score distributions, nonparametric analyses of group differences and trend (on mean ranks) and correlation (Spearman rho) were calculated. Table I reports the correlational and reliability analyses. Instrument reliability was determined by Cronbach's coefficient alpha and is reported along the main diagonal. As can be seen in Table I the reliabilities were uniformly high, ranging from 0.78 (DIT) to 0.91 (government and police subscales). Regarding the correlational analyses, it can be seen that moral judgment (DIT) was not significantly related to any attitude toward specific sources of authority (e.g., mother, father, police, government). There was, however, a significant negative correlation between moral judgment and the CS and AA scales, indicating that advances in principled reasoning are accompanied by declines in conservatism and favorable attitudes toward authority (AA). It is also of interest to examine the pattern of correlations among the authority measures themselves. It should be recalled that high scores on the

DIT

0.78

AA

0,89

- 0.26 b

~p < 0.05.

CS - 0.254 0.434 0.87

*Coefficient alpha is along the main diagonal.

DIT AA CS Mother Father Police Government

- 0.04 -0.06 - 0.06 0.84

Mother - 0.02 0.01 - 0.02 0.394 0.86

Father 0.11 -0.19 - 0.274 0.12 0.354 0.91

Police

Table I. Attitude to Authority and Moral Reasoning: Correlation and Reliability a 0.07 -0.304 - 0.274 0.17 0.304 0.654 0.91

Government

E.

gl

o_

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S35

semantic differential scales for specific sources o f authority (e.g., mother) represent unfavorable attitudes to authority, while high scores on CS and AA represent favorable authority attitudes. Table I shows that the CS and AA scales are more related to each other (r = 0.43, p < 0.05) than they are to specific sources o f authority. The AA scale is correlated negatively with attitudes toward Government (r = - 0.30, p < 0.05), while the CS shows a similar relation to Government (r = - 0 . 2 7 ) and to Police (r = - 0 . 2 8 ) . It should also be noted that attitudes toward Mother and Father are significantly and positively related (r = 0.39, p < 0.05) while being not at all related to AA or to CS. Finally, Police and Government are highly correlated (r = 0.65, p < 0.05), while Father correlates moderately with both Police (r = 0.35, p < 0.05) and Government (r = 0.30, p < 0.05). Taken together, these results suggest that the personological dimension represented by the CS and political conservatism (AA) are more related to each other than they are to attidues toward specific sources o f authority, since the correlation between AA and CS (r = 0.43) is nearly three times the average correlation between these scales and the mother, father, police, and government scales (r = 0.14). When the distinction is made between public impersonal authority (e.g., police, government) and private, personal authority (e.g., mother, father), we see that the CS and AA scales are related to but distinct from attitudes toward public, impersonal authority only. These data indicate that attitudes to authority engendered by political conservatism (AA) and by the conservative personality syndrome (CS) are more likely to be phrased in response to sources o f public, impersonal autority, rather than toward sources of private, personal authority. In addition, attitudes to Police-Government (r = 0.65) and Mother-Father (r = 0.39) do indeed seem to coalesce into the public, impersonal and the private, personal dimension o f authority, respectively, as indicated by the higher correlations within authority source than between. The single exception is that the Father scale is significantly correlated with both Police and Government. This suggests that the authority of Father is seen as representative of "official" sources of authority more often than is the case with the authority of Mother. A series of planned polynomial trend analyses on mean ranks (following Marascuilo and McSweeney, 1968) was calculated to determine developmental functions in moral reasoning and in attitude to authority. Orthogonal coefficients were generated according to procedures outlined by Kirk (1968) for unequal N's. This analysis revealed significant monotonic trends for moral reasoning (DIT, z = 2.82, p < 0.014), AA (z = - 3.31, p < 0.014), CS (z = - 6 . 7 9 , p < 0.014), and for Police (z = 2.99, p < 0.014). Mean ranks are reported in Table II. As Table II indicates, increases in age are accompanied by increases in principled moral reasoning and decreases in CS and AA responding and in attitudes toward a specific source of authority (police). While Police scores

41.53 39.80 72.24

37.76 36.05

13.76 27.89

30.75 56.35

9 11 College

9 11

9 College

11 College

45.42 22.54

27.39 16.63

32.61 37.90

50.00 56.32 27.17

AA

37.58 57.17 35.48

By grade

Mother

43.91 26.04

32.05 12.78

56.58 29.30

43.67 26.59

22.24 20.89

25.34 40.50

By grade and comparison

78.63 46.21 26.83

CS

Table il. Mean Ranks °

41.99 30.46

23.05 20.22

32.31 38.04

45.26 53.03 38.67

Father

36.08 44.07

14.66 27.15

24.08 40.95

41.08 46.22 57.83

Police

35.70 44.96

17.42 24.87

33,66 37.52

28.74 50.04 59.22

Government

~The first set of mean ranks by grade is the overall rankings (based on the total PC) that were used in the calculations of trend. However, these ranks would not be appropriate for the analyses of grade differences. Because the Dunn-Bonferroni analyses on mean ranks are planned comparisons, the ranking on the measures will vary depending on the N of the (two) grades involved in each comparison. Thus each subsequent table represents the mean ranks for each set of planned contrasts for grade differences.

DIT

Grade

gS

es_

la

a

m ~a

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537

increase with age, higher scores on this scale represent increasingly more unfavorable views of authority, as noted above. The next set of analyses was designed to examine grade differences on the dependent variables. To examine grade differences in attitudes to specific sources of authority, two sets of planned contrasts (on mean ranks) were calculated using the Dunn-Bonferroni approach. The Dunn- Bonferroni method permits multiple comparisons while maintaining the overall Type I error rate. The first analyses compared ninth-graders vs. eleventhgraders, ninth-graders vs. college undergraduates, and eleventh-graders vs. college undergraduates on their attitudes toward Mother, Father, Police, and Government. The results indicate that ninth-graders held significantly more favorable attitudes toward Police than did eleventh-graders (z = 3.01, p = 0.016) or college undergraduates (z = 3.28, p = 0.016). There was no significant difference in attitudes toward Police between eleventh-grade and college. Ninth-graders also held more favorable attitudes toward the authority of Mother than did eleventh-graders (z = 3.10, p = 0.016). This indicates that in middle adolescence (eleventh-grade), children are more likely to rebel against the authority of Mother than in early (ninth grade) or late (college) adolescence. No other contrast was statistically significant. ~Fhe second set of Dunn-Bonferroni contrasts examined grade differences on the DIT, CS, and AA scales. On the DIT college subjects were significantly more principled in their moral reasoning than were ninth (z = 3.71,p = 0 . 0 1 6 ) - o r eleventh (z = 4.64,p = 0.016)-graders, who did not significantly differ from each other. Eleventh-graders were less conservative than ninth-graders (z = 4.86, p = 0.016), as measured by the CS, who were more conservative than college subjects (z = 5.05, p = 0.016). That is, high-school freshmen were the most conservative grade sampled in this study, with significant decrements in conservative responding evident at eleventh grade and college. Regarding performance on the AA scale, college subjects revealed less favorable attitudes toward authority than did ninthgraders (z = 2.83, p = 0.016)and eleventh-graders (z = 4.14, p = 0.016). Grades 9 and 11 did not differ from each other on the AA scale. DISCUSSION The results of the study are discussed in terms of the four questions that it was designed to address. The first question concerned the relationship between Kohlbergian moral judgment (DIT) and the conservative personality syndrome (CS). The results revealed a significant negative correlation between the DIT and the CS. This finding supports previous research (e.g., Johnson et al., 1981) which had found that personality factors as well

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Lapsley, l-larwell, Olson, Flannery, and Quintana

as reasoning abilities are involved in moral judgment. On the basis of this study, we can characterize the principled moral reasoner as one who is not likely to possess attitude clusters which favor an orientation toward religious dogmatism, right-wing politics, intolerance, ethocentrism, conformity, punitiveness, and authoritarianism. The principled moral reasoner does not appear to have "feelings of insecurity and inferiority, and a generalized fear of uncertainty" (Wilson, 1973b, p. 265)--traits which characterize the conservative personality. However, this finding does not necessarily cause a problem for Kohlberg's model of moral development. In light of the relatively modest amount of variance accounted for by the DIT-CS correlation, it cannot be claimed that Kohlbergian moral judgment (as measured by the DIT) is essentially a personality construct in disguise (e.g., Johnson et al., 1981). The structural development approach does not intend for moral reasoning to be insulated from the totality of psychological functioning, including the functioning of personological processes. Hence, one may conclude that positive personality features (in this study, the absence of conservative personality traits) are related to principled moral reasoning. But the relationship seems to be one of necessity but not sufficiency. That is, like formal operations and role-taking ability, positive personality features are required for the emergence of principled reasoning, but personality alone is not sufficient to account for it fully. Of course, personality dimensions other than conservatism may be more substantially related to moral thought, but such relationships have yet to be demonstrated using Kohlbergian assessments. We might suggest that if the intention is to show that Kohlberg's theory is essentially a personality theory (Johnson et al., 1981), then one must use a Kohlbergian assessment and not the Survey of Ethical Attitudes, which is unrelated to the Kohlbergian tradition. What is the relationship between moral judgement and attitude to authority, and is Kohlbergian moral judgment politically biased? Attitude to Authority was measured in this study by semantic differential scales which tapped attitudes toward the concepts mother, father, public, and government and also by the AA scale, which assessed attitude to authority in the context of political conservatism. The results indicated that principled moral reasoning was not significantly correlated with attitudes toward either public, impersonal authority (police, government) or private, personal authority (mother, father). Moral judgment did show a significant negative correlation with the AA scale. These findings suggest that principled reasoners have rather neutral attitudes to authority when the sources of authority (both personal and public) are considered in the abstract (e.g., mother, police). However, when the exercise of authority is considered in the context of the liberal-conservative dimension, principled moral reasoners are more likely to align themselves along the liberal end of the

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continuum. Principled reasoners show little inclination to endorse items which reflect political conservatism. This finding supports those who charge that Kohlbergian moral judgment is biased in favor of a liberal political philosophy. However, individuals should not be considerd morally disadvantaged because of their orientation toward a conservative political philosophy, though our results suggest that this indeed may be the case. This finding would seem to cause problems for the Kohlberg model because it tends to blur the important structure/content distinction which is crucial to the structural development approach to moral thought. One would expect, based on this distinction, that liberal and conservative views would be equally capable of being structured along principled lines, inasmuch as political issues are merely the content of moral thought. However, the present results suggest that the structure of principled moral thought is not in fact, neutral with regard to political content but is biased in favor of a liberal political philosophy. However, one caveat is worth noting. It could be argued that the DIT is inherently incapable of indexing the actual underlying structure of moral thought because of its objective format. According to this argument, research which demonstrates a political bias in the theory but which uses assessments other than the clinical interview may not be demonstrating anything in particular about the structure/content distinction. However, given the relatively high correlation between the DIT and Kohlberg's interview (Rest, 1982), one might reasonably expect the political bias to surface with the interview technique as well. Future ~esearch should address this question. We also attempted to examine the relation among the attitude to authority measures and their developmental patterning from early to late adolescence, o u r results indicated that attitudes toward Mother and Father are generally more similar than attitudes toward sources of impersonal, public authority represented by Police and Government, though attitudes toward Father and both Police and Government were significantly correlated as well. These findings are compatible with the common assumption that attitudes toward institutional authorities are partly determined or conditioned by attitudes toward one's parents, particularly the father (e.g., Marsten and Coleman, 1981; Piaget, 1951). However, the correlational analysis reported here does not permit any conclusion regarding a causal relationship. These results also support recent research which shows significant, positive correlations between attitudes toward parents and attitudes toward institutional authority during adolescence (Rigby and Rump, 1981). The finding that the authority of fathers is often viewed in league with the authority of Police and Government also seems compatible with the view that adolescents view father as more punitive (Waiters and Stinnett, 1971), autocratic, or authoritarian (Elder, 1962; Bowerman and Elder, 1964) than mother.

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Lapsley, Harwell, Olson, Flannery, and Quintana

The present study also showed that younger adolescents are more favorably disposed to authority than are older adolescents. This is seen in a number of analyses. It is seen in the trend analyses for conservatism (CS), political conservatism (AA), and the attitude toward Police measure. Thus ninth-graders were more likely to be politically conservative, more likely to display the personological syndrome associated with conformity to authority, and more likely to show more favorable attitudes to a source of public authority than were college undergraduates. The decline in "authoritarian" tendencies during adolescence has been reported elsewhere (Anderson, 1962), though not for the measures employed in this study. It has been suggested (Enright and Lapsley, 1981) that social compliance may be grounded in social cognitive development, with advances in social cognitive ability accounting for the diminution of social compliance from early to late adolescence. The examination of the social cognitive prerequisites of conformity to authority will no doubt prove to be a fruitful line of research for the future. Finally, it is of moment to note that both ninth-graders and college undergraduates held comparably favorable attitudes to the authority of mother. On one level, this is supportive of the general trend noted above regarding the proauthority stance of young adolescents. However, the fact that college subjects are about equally disposed to maternal authority as are ninth-graders, and that eleventh-graders are significantly more likely to be resistant to the authority of Mother than are younger or older adolescents, is broadly supportive of recent research on the transformation of family relations during adolescence. Adolescence is generally considered to be a period where there is a renegotiation of family roles (Youniss, 1980). Adolescents seek more autonomy, equality, and reciprocity in their relationship with their parents, at the expense of unilateral authority and control of the adolescent by the parents. Baranowski (1981) has shown that the adolescent is more likely to effect this transformation through the mother rather than the father.~ In a recent longitudinal study of family interaction patterns, Steinberg (1981) has found that by middle adolescence, or until the pubertal apex, adolescent-mother conflict is intensified. During the latter part of the pubertal cycle, however, this conflict diminishes. The data reported here are compatible with this pattern of family transformations observed by Steinberg (1981). The increased defiance to maternal authority observed in middle adolescence may reflect the heightened adolescent-mother conflict which takes place in the context of the renegotiation of family roles. In sum, the present study shows that principled moral reasoning is associated with positive personality features and a liberal political philosophy. In addition, attitude to authority varies from early to late adolescence, with young adolescents being more conservative and conform-

MoralJudgment

541

ing to authority than older adolescents. It should be noted that the pattern o f results observed here could be affected by differences in general intellectual ability and by social-class differences, inasmuch as our age comparisons involved college freshmen. While there is little reason to expect social-class differences in this case, since both high-school and college samples were from decidedly middle-class backgrounds, there is no evidence regarding the general intellectual ability o f the subjects. Future research will need to consider how conformity and attitude to authority vary across adolescence as a function o f general intelligence and social class. It will also need to consider with more specificity the mechanisms by which changes in attitude to authority and personality development in adolescence are effected through transformations in adolescent-parent relations and by advances in social cognitive development. Finally, future research may also have to consider an alternative conceptualization o f principled morality, one that does not favor one end o f the political continuum at the expense o f the other.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful for the assistance of Edna Noble, Pauline Wright, and Crescent Kringle with the manuscript.

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Moral judgment, personality, and attitude to authority in early and late adolescence.

The purpose of this study was to examine the personological features of moral judgment and to determine the extent to which principled moral reasoning...
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